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Spring 2014 CTL Faculty Fellows Seminar

The following Baruch College faculty members have been selected to participate in the Spring 2014 CTL Faculty Fellows Seminar. The seminar will meet six times over the course of the spring, and in these meetings the participants will work collaboratively to develop new hybrid or fully-online courses that will run at Baruch during the Fall 2014 semester.

Debra Caplan, Fine and Performing Arts
Debra Caplan is Assistant Professor of Theatre at Baruch, in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts. Her research focuses on Yiddish theater and drama, theatrical travel, theatrical modernism, and contemporary Jewish performance culture, and her work has appeared in Comparative Drama and New England Theatre Journal. Prior to joining the Baruch faculty, Debra taught theater history at Emerson College and was Executive Director of the Mellon School for Theater and Performance Research at Harvard, where she is now a member of the advisory board. She holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University, and is currently completing a book manuscript entitled Yiddish Empire: Jews, Theater, and the Aesthetics of Itinerancy. As a CTL Faculty Fellow she will be developing a hybridized section of “Theater 1041: Intro to Theater Arts.”

Antonietta D’Amelio: Modern LanguagesAntonietta D’Amelio is a Full-time Lecturer in the Department of Modern Languages and Comparative Literature and has been at Baruch since 1991. She teaches all levels of Italian courses from the elementary to advanced courses. Some recent courses include “Contemporary Italian Culture” and “Contemporary Italian Fiction.” Her research interests include the Italian Renaissance, the works of Italo Calvino, Italian-American immigrant literature and Foreign Language Pedagogy. In addition, she is an active contributor to numerous Italian language textbooks and has authored educational materials such as Italiano dal Vivo (2006). Professor D’Amelio has also participated in the Freshman Seminar and Learning Communities programs and conducts workshops for colleagues on the use of technology in the classroom and best practices for communication. A recent workshops includes “French Adjunct Teaching Methodology Workshop” (April 2013).

In 2010 she received a Baruch College Technology grant to develop interactive software, “Designing Interactive Software for Language Learners,” which was presented in March 2011 and 2012 at the Baruch Teaching and Technology Conference. Recently, in 2012, she was awarded a research grant by the Weissman School of Arts & Sciences for her ongoing research entitled “Social Media for Language Learning” which explores the use and impact of Facebook on language learning. Professor D’Amelio was awarded Baruch’s Presidential Excellence Award for Distinguished Teaching in 2009. As a CTL Faculty Fellow she will be developing a hybridized section of Italian 3075: Italian Cinema.

Erin Eatough: PsychologyErin Eatough, Assistant Professor of Psychology, has expertise in the area of industrial/organizational psychology with a specific focus in occupational health psychology. Dr. Eatough conducts research on occupational stress and employee well-being. Since coming to Baruch in 2013, she has taught “Introduction to Psychology” and “Introduction to Industrial/Organizational Psychology.” As a CTL Fellow, she will be converting her small face-to-face Introduction to Psychology course into an intimate, fully-online “Introduction to Psychology” course.

Vera Haller: Journalism and the Writing ProfessionsSince joining the faculty of the Department of Journalism and the Writing Professions in 2007, Vera Haller has worked to update the curriculum to prepare students for the new realities of the newsroom. She created the department’s first course in multimedia reporting and added an advanced multimedia course in the Spring 2014 semester. She remains active as a journalist, regularly contributing articles about the city’s neighborhoods to the Greater New York section of The Wall Street Journal, the real estate section of The New York Times, The Huffington Post’s New York site and other publications.

She came to Baruch from amNewYork, the New York City free daily newspaper where she was the editor-in-chief. Before moving to amNewYork, Haller was editor of NYNewsday.com, Newsday’s former Web site devoted to New York City news. She was one of the founding staff members and helped launch the site after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Prof. Haller began her career at The Associated Press, where she was a reporter and editor in the New York City bureau. She then spent many years overseas — first in Rome where she worked for Reuters and then as a freelance reporter in Johannesburgh. As a CTL Faculty Fellow she will be developing a hybridized section of “Journalism 2500: The Individual and the News in the Information Age.”

Christopher Hallowell: Journalism and the Writing ProfessionsChristopher Hallowell has a special interest in science and environmental journalism as well as in narrative nonfiction. He is the author of six books. His latest, Holding Back the Sea (HarperCollins), is an account of the deteriorating Mississippi River delta and Gulf coast and its implications for the rest of the country. He is a frequent speaker on coastal and wetlands issues. He is also the author of People of the Bay (Dutton), recently reprinted by Pelican Publishing. His other books include an historical overview of environmental writing, Green Perspectives: Thinking and Writing about Nature and theEnvironment (HarperCollins), and Listening to Earth (Pearson Longman), and an update on gerontological research, Growing Old, Staying Young (Dutton). He has contributed articles to Time, The New York Times Magazine, American Scholar, Audubon, and Natural History. As a CTL Faculty Fellow he will be developing a hybridized section of “Journalism 3600: Creative Nonfiction.”

David Hoffman: School of Public Affairs
David Hoffman works at the intersection of rhetoric, history and politics. He has published work on classical rhetorical theory, as well as rhetorical criticism of political figures, both historical and contemporary. His work has appeared in such journals as Rhetorica, Rhetoric and Public Affairs, and Rhetoric Society Quarterly. Professor Hoffman has also taught courses in rhetorical theory, persuasion, and public advocacy and has conducted seminars in leadership and the communication of emotion. He has helped to conduct communication development sessions for the Leadership Academy, the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, and the Greater New York Hospital Association.

Hoffman received his Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Iowa in 2000. As a CTL Faculty Fellow he will be developing a hybridized section of “PAF 9103: Communication in Public Settings.”

Eric Mandelbaum: Philosophy
Eric’s research focuses on foundational issues in cognitive science, particularly on cognitive architecture broadly construed. The overarching goal of this work is to understand the extent of interaction among the mind’s faculties. Recent projects on this front include modeling belief acquisition, storage, and change. A related project of his examines the structure of mental representations and mental transitions—in particular comparing, one the one hand, theories of propositional and inferential transitions, and, on the other, associative structures and transitions. He’s been developing a framework for understanding associative transitions between propositionally structured states and applying it to analyzing the underlying structure of implicit bias. Eric has also been investigating the automaticity of perceptual processes, and the mechanics of anthropomorphization as the seeds of religious belief. His dissertation, which focused on models of belief acquisition, received both the Cognitive Science Society’s Glushko Dissertation Prize and the Roger Shepard Award for best dissertation in cognitive science. Eric has also received the Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Award, the UNC Society of Fellows Dissertation Fellowship, the ACLS New Faculty Fellowship, and Harvard University’s Mind/Brain/Behavior Fellowship. Before joining Baruch College, Eric taught at Harvard, Yale, and Oxford universities. As a CTL Faculty Fellow, Eric will examine the potential of logic-proof software for future use in an online logic course.

Kannan Mohan: Computer Information Systems
Kannan Mohan is an Associate Professor of Computer Information Systems at the Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College. He completed his Ph.D. in Computer Information Systems from J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University. He holds a B. Engg. in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Coimbatore Institute of Technology. His research spans areas including agile software development, IT governance, sustainability & IT, distributed software development, and product family development. His teaching interests include systems analysis and design and green IT. As a CTL Faculty Fellow he will be developing a hybridized section of “CIS 3700: Green IT.”

Sean O’Toole: EnglishSean O’Toole specializes in nineteenth-century British literature and culture and queer studies. A graduate of Georgetown University (BA) and the City University of New York Graduate Center (PhD), he was a post-doctoral lecturer in the Princeton Writing Program before joining the Baruch faculty in 2008.

He is the author of Habit in the English Novel, 1850-1900 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and is currently working on a new study of Oscar Wilde that grows out of a 2012 NEH summer seminar at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, UCLA. An essay related to this project will soon be published in ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Richard A. Kaye. His work has also appeared in Victorian Literature and Culture, The Henry James Review, The Journal of the History of Sexuality, and The Reader’s Guide to Lesbian and Gay Studies (Routledge, 2000). Professor O’Toole teaches “ENG 2100/21250: Writing,” “ENG 2850: Great Works of Literature,” “ENG 3005:Introduction to Literary Studies,” “ENG 3015: Survey of British Literature II,” “ENG 4320: Nineteenth-Century Novel,” as well as various special topics courses. As a CTL Faculty Fellow he will be developing a hybridized section of “English 2100: Writing I.”

Zoë Sheehan Saldana: Fine and Performing Arts
Zoë Sheehan Saldaña (MFA, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York) is Associate Professor of Art at Baruch College. She completed her undergraduate degree at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, and studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Skowhegan, Maine. She is a visual artist who uses photography, craft processes, sculpture, drawing, and digital media to make images and objects. Her work examines such notions as the shifting value of the handmade in art, the dynamic between low and high art forms, the imperfect and often additive nature of copying and reproduction, and the multiple roles of the audience in the art experience. Her work has been shown and reviewed in the U.S. and internationally. As a CTL Faculty Fellow she will be developing a hybridized section of “ART 3041: Special Topics, 3D Digital Design.”

David Sitt: Psychology
David Sitt is a tenured lecturer in the Baruch College Psychology department with over 14 years of teaching experience. His courses include Introduction to Psychology, Abnormal Psychology, Social Psychology, and Cognitive Therapies. Over the years, Dr. Sitt has integrated technology into his courses by creating original video content, encouraging the use of Blogs@Baruch, or developing student-driven streaming podcasts. Throughout his courses, Dr. Sitt aims to utilize advances in educational technology in order to enhance the pedagogical experience. Dr. Sitt believes that teaching with cutting-edge technologies is the best way to stimulate student engagement. Through the CTL Fellowship, Dr. Sitt looks forward to developing a hybrid version of the popular Introduction to Psychology course here at Baruch. As a CTL Faculty Fellow he will be developing a hybridized section of “Psychology 1001, Intro to Psychology.”